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We have seen over 900 view Turn Digi on April 30th and another nearly 400 view the event May 21st. In July we will be putting on a Turn Digi event featuring majority of freelance and self employed online marketing professionals.

The event will be live streamed to the “Turn Digi” YouTube channel. The talks will be streamed in 4 different videos.

After the success of Turn Digi April 30th and in light that there will not be any offline events for the rest of spring and summer at least, I am running another online marketing event on May 21st.

More than 50% of the speakers at this event run their own business and I want Turn Digi to be a platform to support them, as well as for some of those who have not spoken as much before in the online marketing industry.

The event will be live streamed to the “Turn Digi” YouTube channel. The talks will be streamed in 4 different videos, to set up this week.

11:00am BST start:

Luke Carthy – Three new data points you need to measure in Google Analytics

Health is very important and we have all seem the cancellation and postponement of conferences/events.

However those who are self employed or remote workers who depend on these types of events, cannot afford to wait until the autumn to attend at the rescheduled time.

We are already seeing stock prices plunge with the stock market and to attempt at minimising this down fall of sales and business opportunities, I am creating this free online event, “Turn Digi”.

The online event will be about : “Remote working, mental health and good well being as well as inaccessibility – plus practical online marketing tips ” Practical tips will be tips for setting up GTM, setting up Analytics, doing a tech audit, site migration, organising your time and many more.

Earlier this year, I started hearing about “imposter syndrome” and to be honest I had not come across it before. It seemed to be coming from more females than males, so I looked it up.

Imposter syndrome is a constant feeling of self doubt and insecurity and a fear of being found out to be a fraud even though that person is a high achiever. This syndrome was identified more than 30 years ago, in 1978 by psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes. At first it was thought that this affected only women but in subsequent research it has shown that men are also affected. Due to the biological nature of women, they are more susceptible because they produce less testosterone which is the confidence hormone. What I was surprised to read was a study by Natwest that 60% of women put off starting a business due to imposter syndrome. This is terrible. One more hurdle for females to overcome.

I have been remote working off and on since 2011. I had wanted to remote work before then but I did not know what it meant.

When we were younger my dad’s job meant we moved around the world, living in 6 different countries by the time I was 13. We were lucky to experience so much at such a young age as well as visiting many other countries and cities near to where we were living. However some places I lived, I really loved and did not want to leave. Therefore as a 10 year old, I vowed to work where ever I wanted in the world. Little did I know about digital marketing or online businesses.

Since going back to working full time remote in 2015, I have a lot of tips on what we should do to help you be as productive as possible. I try and take part in online events as much as possible, Alexandra hosts her Digital Olympus that was purely online and branched out to offline as well, there was even a global work from home day last year too put together by Remote How.

Now with many people working from home due to the coronavirus, I wanted to share these tips:

Tell everyone you are working from home. Otherwise they may get you to do invisible jobs (like weeding or cleaning out the cupboards)

Get a proper desk and chair. If you cannot go and buy one, see if you can borrow one from your friends or family.

Change out of your PJs before 9am. It can be 8:58 but make sure you are in work or outdoor clothes before your official work time.

Have a lunch and your regular breaks – you could do lunch with your mom/dad – whoever is not working

Plan a proper stop time and do something away from your desk, this way you are not working into the night.

DO NOT answer the door or phone calls that would go unanswered if you were in the office away from home

DO NOT start doing cleaning jobs or getting distracted with that is on the tv

BE STRICT with yourself, ask yourself if you would act that way in the office (eg watching tv all day)

Communicate with your team. There are a lot of different channels to use, for example Slack, skype (yes skype) and mattermost.

Keep up to date with your tasks, Trello is one way to record your to-do list, asana is a good project management tool.

Have video conferences when you need to through GoToMeeting or Zoom or skype (yes still exists).

Keep to a schedule as if you were in the office.

Get up and walk around – sitting down for too long is not healthy. Your legs will not like you for it.

Make the most of your non commuting time – you may need to get super fast broadband installed.

I went to IKEA to get my desk and chair, the chair was 159 Euros but it is the best chair I have had. Plus I also bought a foot stool. If you cannot find a footstool, get a small box or small step ladder to use under your desk

Working from home is not for everyone. However, during this coronavirus it is recommended everyone stays at home and avoids going out, I recently read about Florian Reifschneider who set up this StayTheF**kAtHome campaign to encourage people to stay at home. Avoid large crowds, do not take the metro or public transport and stay safe.

Last year I started a survey about voice search and disability as I noticed when I attended conferences people were talking about voice search but no one was mentioning about how it was helping those who are disabled.

ComScore projected that 50% of all searches would be voice search by 2020, but there has been limited information about voice search helping those who may be blind/partially sighted, deaf or unable to speak clearly or use their hands.

I was fortunate to be introduced to Lily earlier this month and we are relaunching the project with updated questions about how voice search can help those who are disabled. If voice search is inaccessible then we want to ensure that something is done to ensure everyone has the opportunity to be connected to this technology.

Lily shares her thoughts on the project:

“As someone who has been disabled all my life, and have recently begun working in digital marketing, researching accessibility online and through technology is very important to me. This project is very interesting and will be used to inform leaders in voice technology where their focus should be next. By drawing attention to a key part of their audience, accessibility will hopefully become a key focus for those developing voice technologies. It is crucial to consider disabled people as part of the audience for a product and service and to understand that not all those with disabilities have the same needs, but by endeavouring to understand these needs more, it is increasingly possible to try and cater for a wide variety of people.

As a deaf person, voice technologies have been inaccessible to me, but I can see with a transcription facility, I would be able to orally ask a question and to read the response. However, it is important to note that voice technologies may never be accessible for some disabled people, but this research allows us to know where technology industries can move forward and progress to ensure all products and services are made with disabled people in mind”

I first met Becky Simms in the lead up to Digital Elite Day in June this year. Becky runs her own business, speaks at many conferences including International Search Summit and she recently introduced a 4 day week at her company. I wanted to find out what it was like to run her own business and the effects of implementing a 4 day week at an agency, something I thought may have been unheard of in the UK, but something I wanted to happen.

When did you set up your own business and why?

Reflect Digital was founded in my little flat back in 2011. I had worked in two agencies and seen two different environments, but still felt there was a place to do things differently. I had always dreamed of running my own business, my dad had been my inspiration as he ran a business and I always wanted to be like him, I just did not know what that business would be.

I wanted to create an agency that truly put the client’s results at the forefront but also, and just as important, that the team were put first as well. I wanted to create somewhere that the team had the autonomy to do what they are best at and a safe place to be creative and to challenge the norm.

2. Do you think you need to have a certain number of years experience before branching out on your own?

Yes and no. I had 5 years work experience, which helped, but I did not have experience of hiring people, doing accounts, being in charge of HR etc… I do a lot of work with students and I always say that I believe to get the base skills needed to grow a team you need to have had an amazing boss and a terrible boss. You need to understand that scale so you can identify where you sit and ensure you are never that terrible boss and always striving to be that amazing boss.

There are entrepreneurs out there doing an amazing job without any experience, but the key to this is being open to feedback and help. I too have become more open to this and realised it is not a failing to need help and advice, you cannot expect yourself to know everything, especially when every day can lead you into unknown territory.

3. Your company introduced a 4 day week last year, what prompted you to do this?

Our 4-day week was born out of wanting to do something different, we wanted to switch up the way we worked but needed to keep consistency and collaboration at the forefront. Consistency was important for our clients and collaboration was important for the work we do – we are hugely collaborative and therefore this ruled out offering extremely flexible working which can result in the team working whatever hours they wish. We also wanted to put our team’s wellness at the forefront, working in an agency can be stressful, therefore ensuring we all have time to recharge is important to deliver the best results we can and get the right balance between work and play.

We were chatting to Jonny, who is now our Group CEO, and LAB were about to bring in the 4-day week and this seemed to fit everything we wanted it to. It offered consistency for clients that they would know when we were working and we would be open 4 days a week. Plus it did not stop the collaboration, just changed it slightly as we are now only all in work Tues-Thurs.

We all work longer days for the four days, e.g. 08:00-18:15. So the agency has not lost any billable time and we truly are more productive in this time. We do have the 4-day week as an optional benefit, as it is only a benefit if it works for you individually, so we do have a couple of team members that opt for normal hours across 5 days.

One of our values is challenging the norm and this seemed like a fantastic way to do just that and we have not looked back.

4. What has been the result of the 4 day week?

The results have on the whole been fantastic. The only slight negative is that we are only all together Tues-Thurs, so it does mean we have to plan internal meetings around this.

The main results have been:

Productivity increase – we have seen over a 20% increase in productivity. We put this down to the longer days and the drive to get things done so the team can truly enjoy their 3 days off not worrying about work.

Staff wellness is up also by over 20%, people get more downtime by having the three days together, offering more time to relax, see friends/family and to do what they love doing outside of work.

Job satisfaction is up 90%.

Our revenue at the end of FY in March was up 25% recording our best year ever and this current year is set to be even better.

Our clients have also noted benefits in getting to work with a wider team, as on certain days their normal contact is not in. This offers more collaboration, more ideas and also less reliance on one team member as the main point of contact.

5. Do you think experience or a degree is more important in online marketing and why?

I 100% think experience outweighs a degree in our industry. The pace of change is high and to truly be good within digital one of the biggest skills is adaptability and drive to test and learn. Degrees cannot keep up, we often take on year placement students or interns over the summer and they all learn so much more with us than they feel like they do within their degrees.

6. What has been the highlight of your career and why?

Wow, there have been a few, recently becoming part of the LAB group, winning Digital Leader at the Wirehive Awards and our recent office move are very close. But actually, the day that has given me the best feeling ever, was our student conference Aspiration Digital last year, we are about to run our second, so this might just top it! This event was born out of my frustration that school students do not realise all the amazing possibilities in our industry, they are so tech-savvy, but they do not know what goes on behind the scenes and where they may fit into.

I started by running student workshops and inviting them into our agency, but this was a maximum of 10 students at a time, which felt quite slow from an impact perspective. So I came up with the idea to run an event, roping in as many amazing speakers that I could to share their experiences within marketing, design, development and the business side of running an agency. The result was the most inspiring day for over 200 students. You can see last year’s video here.

I believe it is our responsibility to help schools and to drive this knowledge, the teachers have a curriculum to follow and so many industries to be aware of, we are the experts and we need to be there inspiring the students to try and stop the digital skills gap that is occurring.”

Thank you Becky for your time. Really looking forward to your talk at International Search Summit Barcelona. As a media partner for IntSS, all readers will have 10% off the price of a ticket, simply use ISSBCN10JT at checkout.

As we are coming into a new “school year”, I wanted this site, SEO Jo Blogs to have more information to help those in the industry, whether it is guidance about the next career move or confirmation about a project they are working on, or just motivation if they are in a bad place right now. Therefore part of the blog will feature interviews from inspirational and motivating people. I have found that hope is something that can easily get crushed but it is the one thing that keeps people motivated. I also realised that everyone has a choice in what they do career wise, but each choice can have consequences, which can both be bad and good. Hope can sometimes be crushed when that career choice has negative consequences.

Digital Elite Day took place on Thursday June 6th and I was honored to be the MC for the Search Elite track. This year was bigger and better than ever before with 26 speakers and over 200 attendees. Below is a write up of some of the key points from the Search Elite track.

PWAs SEO: Optimising for the Future of the Web

EU Search Personality of 2018, Aleyda Solis and founder of Orainti was up first at the Search Elite track. Aleyda said that apps provided a fragmented and vertical specificities app experience. They can be expensive to develop, but we end up installing a lot of them.

Why do we install apps?

The reason is that it is easier to access apps through the home screen

Apps can use additional phone features

Mobile websites speed and usability

You need internet to access web content.

SO mobile web is also broken. BUT it is not more broken than the app one.

BrightonSEO is one of the best conferences in the UK and in Europe. It is the place to learn about news and what you should be doing in online marketing, not just SEO, but paid search, competitive analysis and social media. Read some of the takeaways from these speakers at BrightonSEO.